What we call the “gig economy” is, in practice, a debt-and-fear economy — one that goes unchallenged in hyper-progressive places like NYC precisely because liberals have redefined “compassion” as ignoring the law.
Posts tagged as “Column of the Day”
Connecticut is again poised to take a costly step deeper into the business of health care.
On Oct. 14, the CT Mirror reported the state is preparing to borrow nearly $390 million to allow UConn Health to purchase Waterbury Hospital from Prospect Medical Holdings, a bankrupt private operator.
In 2023 computer hackers stole $6 million from the New Haven school system and city government fired the system’s information technology director over it. ...the other day a labor arbitrator ruled that the theft wasn’t the fault of the information technology director and that she must be returned to her job with back pay, which may amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Mayor Justin Elicker said he was “disappointed” by the arbitrator’s decision and still believes that the firing was justified.
But the mayor can’t be too disappointed. If he really thought the employee is culpable and her reinstatement is wrong, he might be questioning the state law and the city’s contracts with its unions that give government employees the right to binding arbitration of personnel decisions and well as binding arbitration of union contracts themselves.
After all, the public elects mayors and school board members to administer the government. The public doesn’t elect arbitrators.
At the heart of this concern is the sheer scale of exposure, both domestic and international, to American equities. This growing interconnectedness means that any sharp downturn in American markets will reverberate around the world.
Inside Investigator submitted a Freedom of Information request to the state Comptroller’s office for all full-time executive branch employees with mailing addresses outside the state of Connecticut and received back 505 names, with town and state data.
By far, most of those employees (442) live in Connecticut’s next door neighbor states.
In some cases, the data was just wrong... one manager who lived in Florida had actually retired... Others had retired,.. but have since returned to state service as a temporary worker/retiree and maintain residence in-state. Others were seasonal employees or substitute teachers who only worked occasionally...
For the remaining full-time, active employees who had out of state mailing addresses – of which there were thirteen – they were nearly all long-time employees, making over six figures, and working in IT or a similarly computer-based role.
Of about 340 million Americans, 83 million are on Medicaid.
That’s one-fourth of us.
Forty percent of American children are on Medicaid. Forty percent!
Try to wrap your head around those figures. One in four of us has his healthcare paid for by the other three, who are also paying for their own healthcare. Two of every five children in the country have been brought into the world by people who are not in a condition to provide them healthcare, so the rest of us pick up the tab, in addition to paying for the healthcare of our own
children.
Editor's note: Today (June 23, 2025) Governor Lamont vetoed the bill against which this column so eloquently argued.
Connecticut’s legislature is considering a bill that would allow striking workers to collect unemployment benefits.
In supporting testimony, Sen. Martin Looney (D-New Haven) recalled childhood memories of his father’s involvement in the 1979 strike at the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. He highlighted the financial strain of picket lines and meager union strike funds.
Winchester Repeating Arms Company was once a cornerstone of New Haven’s economy. At its peak during wartime, the factory employed an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 workers, producing iconic firearms. Its Winchester Avenue plant sustained vibrant working-class neighborhoods, offering stable, well-paying jobs that supported families like that of Sen. Looney’s father.
Several decades later, in 2006, Winchester shuttered its doors claiming “many efforts were made to improve profitability.” In short, Connecticut was an unaffordable state in which to conduct business.
Each day brings horror stories of specific victims allegedly caught in Trump’s dastardly web: the wrongfully deported migrant, the African child whose life-saving medicine is threatened...
Even accounting for the hyperbole that casts each illegal immigrant as an angel and every government program and federal employee as doing God’s work... the stories are a cynical strategy deployed by those who seek to derail Trump’s reforms by trumpeting the "tragedy” of isolated individuals.
Trump’s reform efforts hinge on the blindingly obvious premise that tomorrow’s pain will be far worse and more widespread if we do not act today. His opponents seem happy to let the grave illness metastasize... ignoring the clear and present dangers to our country.
A fiscal meteor is heading our way; everybody knows it. But our deeply secular ruling class seems to be banking on divine intervention to save the day. That speeding rock everyone can see is, of course, our national debt, which now stands at almost $37 trillion.
Public-employee unionism is a pernicious force in Connecticut government. Strong unions are good for the Democratic lawmakers they serve so well— providing campaign money and manpower in election years— and good for union members and leaders, but not so good for business people, retirees, and nonunion working men and women.
Without cost-inflating union contracts, state and municipal governments could deliver lower taxes, and more and better services to their constituents. It’s really that simple. It remains to be seen whether Connecticut’s Republican Party, or some other political entity, can carry that ball to electoral success and bring home that message.
Discussion among Connecticut seniors like me invariably drifts towards our children and grandchildren with a common theme – everyone must experience inconvenient travel for family reunions because our children have left the state.
Why?
Because the Democrats have destroyed our once job-creating economy with high taxes to finance the public sector with high wages, huge pensions and Cadillac health care coverage.